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docs Probe identity

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Probe identity

A request to your site carried a User-Agent like this one:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; uptimepage/1.5.0; +https://github.com/uptimepage/uptimepage/blob/main/docs/bot.md)

uptimepage is open-source uptime monitoring. Anyone can run their own copy, and that is where this request came from: someone running uptimepage on their own servers asked it to check a URL on your site. A copy left on its default settings links this page, because its operator has not published one of their own.

The people who publish uptimepage do not run that copy and cannot stop it. To reach whoever does, look up the abuse contact for the IP address the request came from (whois <address> names the network that owns it).

What the probe does, whoever runs it:

  • It requests the one URL it was given, on a schedule, and records whether it answered and how fast.
  • It follows redirects, but not links. It does not crawl, scan ports or look for vulnerabilities.
  • It does not read robots.txt, which is meant for crawlers.

To block it, match uptimepage/ anywhere in the User-Agent and refuse the request at your firewall or web server.

If the link in the User-Agent points at uptimepage.dev instead, the request came from the hosted service, which publishes its own bot page. A User-Agent is only a header, though, and any client can send one.

If you run uptimepage

Your probes link this page until you give them one of your own. Publish a page that says who you are and how to reach you, then set http_client.bot_url to it on the control plane and on every agent:

UPTIMEPAGE_HTTP_CLIENT__BOT_URL=https://status.example.com/bot

With deployment/docker-compose.agent.yml it is AGENT_BOT_URL in the agent's .env; with the Helm charts, add the variable under extraEnv.

The User-Agent keeps its Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; uptimepage/<version>; …) shape, so site owners who allowlist uptimepage/ keep letting your checks through. To replace the whole header instead, set http_client.user_agent; see Configuration.